Discussion (3 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas

David Brent on Guitar – Free Love Freeway – The Office – BBC

Scientist Dr. Henry “Fritz” Schaefer gives a lecture on the cosmological argument and shows how contemporary science backs it up.

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FLEW, LOGICAL POSITIVISM, AND THE REBIRTH

OF RATIONAL THEISM

Here’s the paradox. By defending the legitimacy of discuss-

ing theological claims and challenging philosophers of

reli-gion to elucidate their assertions, Flew facilitated the

rebirth of rational theism in analytic philosophy after the dark days

of logical positivism. A little background information will

be of value here.

Logical positivism, as some might remember, was the

philosophy introduced by a European group called the

Vienna Circle in the early 1920s and popularized by A. J.

Ayer in the English-speaking world with his 1936 work Lan-

guage, Truth and Logic. According to the logical positivists,

the only meaningful statements were those capable of being

verified through sense experience or true simply by virtue

of their form and the meaning of the words used. Thus a

statement was meaningful if its truth or falsehood could

be verifi ed by empirical observation (e.g., scientifi c study).

The statements of logic and pure mathematics were tautol-

ogies; that is, they were true by definition and were simply

ways of using symbols that did not express any truth about

the world. There was nothing else that could be known

or coherently discussed. At the heart of logical positivism

was the verification principle, the claim that the meaning

of a proposition consists in its verification. The result was

that the only meaningful statements were those used in

science, logic, or mathematics. Statements in metaphysics,

religion, aesthetics, and ethics were literally meaningless,

because they could not be verified by empirical methods.

They were neither valid nor invalid. Ayer said that it was

just as absurd to be an atheist as to be a theist, since the

statement “God exists” simply has no meaning.

Today many introductory works of philosophy associ-

ate Flew’s approach in “Theology and Falsification” with

Ayer’s kind of logical positivist assault on religion, since

both question the meaningfulness of religious statements.

The problem with this picture is that it does not in any

way reflect Flew’s own understanding of the matter then or

now. In fact, far from buttressing the positivist view of reli-

gion, Flew considered his paper as a final nail in the coffin

of that particular way of doing philosophy.

In a 1990 presentation I organized on the fortieth anni-

versary of the publication of “Theology and Falsification,”

Flew stated:

As an undergraduate I had become increasingly

frustrated and exasperated by philosophical debates

which seemed always to revert to, and never to move

forward from, the logical positivism most brilliantly

expounded in . . .Language, Truth and Logic

. . . . The intention in both these papers [the versions of “The-

ology and Falsification” first presented at the Socrat-

ic Club and then published in University] was the

same. Instead of an arrogant announcement that

everything which any believer might choose to say is

to be ruled out of consideration a priori as allegedly

constituting a violation of the supposedly sacrosanct

verification principle—here curiously

maintained as a secular revelation—I preferred to offer a more

restrained challenge. Let the believers speak for

themselves, individually and severally.

The story is taken up in the present work, where Flew com-

ments again on the provenance of his celebrated paper:

During my last term at the University of Oxford, the

publication of A. J. Ayer’s book Language, Truth and

Logic had persuaded many members of the Socratic

Club that the Ayerian heresy of logical positivism—

the contention that all religious propositions are

without cognitive significance—had to be refuted.

The first and only paper I ever read to the Socratic

Club, “Theology and Falsification,” provided what I

then considered to be a sufficient refutation. I be-

lieved I had achieved a total victory and there was

no room for further debate.

As any history of philosophy will show, logical positiv-

ism did indeed come to grief by the 1950s because of its

internal inconsistencies. In fact, Sir Alfred Ayer himself,

in a contribution to an anthology I edited, stated: “Logi-

cal positivism died a long time ago. I don’t think much of

Language, Truth and Logic is true. I think it is full of mis-

takes. I think it was an important book in its time because

it had a kind of cathartic effect. . . .But when you get down

to detail, I think it’s full of mistakes which I spent the last

fifty years correcting or trying to correct.”1

At any rate, the departure of logical positivism and Flew’s

new rules of engagement gave a fresh impetus to philosophi-

cal theism. Numerous major works of theism in the analytic

tradition have since been written by Richard Swinburne,

Alvin Plantinga, Peter Geach, William P. Alston, George

Mavrodes, Norman Kretzmann, James F. Ross, Peter Van

Inwagen, Eleonore Stump, Brian Leftow, John Haldane,

and many others over the last three decades. Not a few of

these address issues such as the meaningfulness of asser-

tions about God, the logical coherence of the divine attri-

butes, and the question of whether belief in God is properly

basic—precisely the issues raised by Flew in the discussion

he sought to stimulate. The turn toward theism was high-

lighted in a Time magazine cover story in April 1980: “In a

quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly any-

one would have foreseen only two decades ago, God is mak-

ing a comeback. Most intriguingly this is happening . . . in

the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers.”

Does God Exist?: William Lane Craig vs Antony Flew

Uploaded on Dec 16, 2010

http://drcraigvideos.blogspot.com – William Lane Craig and Antony Flew met in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the famous Copleston/Russell debate to discuss the question of God’s existence in a public debate. Unlike Richard Dawkins, Flew was one of the most respected atheist thinkers of the 20th and early 21st century (his scholarly works on David Hume are still studied today, and his “presumption of atheism” argument is still used by atheists). He became a deist* shortly before he died in April, 2010 (although he was an atheist when he debated Craig). The debate was transcribed into a book: http://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-…

____________ Jesus’ Resurrection: Atheist, Antony Flew, and Theist, Gary Habermas, Dialogue Published on Apr 7, 2012 http://www.veritas.org/talks – Did Jesus die, was he buried, and what happened afterward? Join legendary atheist Antony Flew and Christian historian and apologist Gary Habermas in a discussion about the facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Join the […]

_______ ________ Does God Exist?: William Lane Craig vs Antony Flew Uploaded on Dec 16, 2010 http://drcraigvideos.blogspot.com – William Lane Craig and Antony Flew met in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the famous Copleston/Russell debate to discuss the question of God’s existence in a public debate. Unlike Richard Dawkins, Flew was one of the most […]

_________________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his […]

_____________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

___________ Does God Exist?: William Lane Craig vs Antony Flew Uploaded on Dec 16, 2010 http://drcraigvideos.blogspot.com – William Lane Craig and Antony Flew met in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the famous Copleston/Russell debate to discuss the question of God’s existence in a public debate. Unlike Richard Dawkins, Flew was one of the most respected […]

___________ ________ Antony Flew – World’s Most Famous Atheist Accepts Existence of God Uploaded on Nov 28, 2008 Has Science Discovered God? A half-century ago, in 1955, Professor Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his Theology and Falsification, a paper presented in a debate with C.S. Lewis. This work became the most […]

________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

__________ Robert Jastrow on God and the Big Bang Published on Jun 26, 2012 Henry “Fritz” Schaefer comments on a popular quote made by scientist Robert Jastrow. Jastrow (who Carl Sagan was too scared to debate) is an agnostic but believes that the Big Bang leaves room for the existence of God. ____________ William Lane Craig […]

Is Richard Dawkins a secular bigot? Maybe the best person to address this was the famous atheist Antony Flew who left his atheism in 2004. Flew Slams Dawkins… Labels: Books, Religion & Society By Regis Nicoll|Published Date: August 25, 2008 …as a “secular bigot.” After the world’s most influential atheist stunned the atheist community with his book There Is a […]

Today I am going to look at H.J. Blackham and the artist featured today is Arturo Herrera. Herrera’s art interests me because it is based on the idea that accidental chance can bring about something beautiful and that is the same place that materialistic modern men like Blackham have turned to when they have concluded […]